People are obviously not understanding the merit system. This is intended for people to stop posting generic comments, spam, one line comments or useless opinions just to rank up. There's nothing wrong with one line comments, there are multiple times that is much better to be concise and straight forward and you can still have merit for an opinion like that. That's why the name "merit" you have to earn it. You have to participative, more collaborative, more useful, help each other and grow as a community. Merit is not a dead failure, is a system that will make this community grow as a whole with content and users that make a valuable forum.

You getting angry with more "advance members" because they were lucky to register their accounts long ago and be able to achieve the rank they currently are easier, is the same as if you would get angry of people grabbing bitcoin at $10. Of course it was easier to have 100 BTC back then, is much harder now with more people interested in it. The same goes with a higher rank in the forum, the more people are interested in it, the more scarce and valuable it becomes. Simple golden rule of supply and demand. Time is the most valuable measure of opportunity you can have.